Somerset Road Safety Partnership ‘Rider Performance’ Day

Last Wednesday (May 13) I gave a presentation on behalf of Somerset Road Safety Partnership at their ‘Rider Performance’ Day at Castle Combe race circuit.

For me personally, it was a very interesting day; a chance to meet fellow professionals in the field of riding skills and to interact in a classroom format with a large group of mixed abilities, a rather different day from my normal 1:1 training out on the road!

The 40-odd attendees were split into two groups, based on their riding experience, so as to make better use of the facilities and to allow for the Avon tyre guy to do his two sessions back to back in his lunch break! That meant I got to do the first session of the day at around 9:30 after the initial briefing, and then the final “graveyard shift” at around 4pm!

The basic brief I’d been given was to run a “workshop” about defensive riding and try to show that many motorcycle accidents are avoidable by the rider; in other words to approach riding with a defensive mindset.

It’s not the easiest topic to approach, not least because biking is about having fun and defensive riding doesn’t sound fun, but also because many riders firmly believe that they had nothing to do with an accident involving another vehicle, because it “wasn’t their fault”. Legally that might be the case but it takes two to tangle – do they have to drive into the accident that someone else is about to cause?

The answer is “no” of course – with the right knowledge of where accidents happen, and a basic understanding of why they happen, it’s possible to put in place relatively simple strategies to avoid dangerous situations.

Slowing down in hazardous places is the most obvious – with more time, you can look around and spot the issues more easily, as well as having a better chance of dealing with them. The key point to get over here is that “slowing down” doesn’t mean slowing your whole ride – it means being more selective about where you add your speed.

Seeing and being seen is another key strategy. It should be obvious that if you can’t see something, you don’t know it’s there. A good rider will consider what they can see, and from that work out the areas they can’t see and take a long hard think about what might be hidden out of sight. But for many road users if you can’t be seen, you’re likely to be out of mind. So positioning is as much about allowing others to know you are there as gathering your own information.

Some instructors hate the expression “expecting the unexpected”; they suggest that if you expect it, it’s not unexpected any more, and they have a point. Thus perhaps a better way of thinking is to look at any situation and ask “what can go wrong here?” Planning for disaster rather than for everything to pan out exactly as you hoped means you’re far less likely to be surprised when you DO have to take evasive action. I firmly believe a pragmatic approach to understanding why other road users and ourselves get entangled with each other is a far better solution to improving rider safety than teaching them the “Holy Grail” of the zero error Perfect Ride!

Now, I could have approached all this in a 1960’s “chalk and talk” classroom session or worse still “Death by Powerpoint”, a style of presentation for which I personally have an attention span very slightly longer than an extremely bored goldfish.

On the other hand, I didn’t want to go the equally dire “team building” approach to my session!

So I used a mixture of approaches, based around the rather excellent “Perfect Day” video. It’s a short two minute video showing a rider avoiding a number of hazards along the way, and as such it’s an excellent teaching tool for illustrating that common accidents that have potentially nasty consequences.

What the video demonstrates nicely is that not only are the potential problems the result of easily avoidable errors, but the rider also has plenty of clues that the things are about to go pear shaped, and has simple solutions to staying out of trouble.

I took out three of the scenarios the video painted for further study. I split the group up into teams and then asked each team to look at various aspects of each situation – what the problem was, what the clues were, where the rider could expect to find the potential hazard and what they could do about it. Each scenario asked the same questions but gave them a different way to approach it.

Final conclusion? If I’m not scaring myself witless as I ride, I have more fun! Defensive riding works!

With only 50-odd minutes for the entire session, it was quickfire stuff, but watching the body language of some of the attendees I’m confident I got the point over to some that didn’t show much interest initially, and I got some good feedback from some of the people sitting in, particularly after the first session when people had a moment to talk to me over a much-needed cuppa!

Certainly, there were some teething problems. Jim the organiser had brought along a projector but it took a while to find the screen to show the movie, and I was expecting a whiteboard or flip chart, neither of which materialised, but on the whole I think it went well for a first run of a new format presentation.

In between times of course, I was free to wander round and see what else was going on.

Martin Hopp and his team of instructors from Hopp Rider Training were out on the track doing a subset of their normal training from up at Cadwell Park, with a “machine preparation” session, a frank talk about crashing and the consequences, slow riding and braking exercises, and plenty of track time.

I was interested to see that Martin got the trainees to actually lock the front brake in a straight line.

This “lock and slide the front” thing is something I’ve been demo’ing for years on the “urban” section of my Survival Skills 2 day course and the City Riding / Collision Avoidance courses but perhaps I need to do it on the Bends course too. For the time being I’ll stick to demos rather than getting trainees to do it but hard braking is clearly an area that many riders with cornering problems are weak on, not least because many riders never practice emergency stops.

Martin’s instructors also worked on the exact same approach I suggest for smooth stops – modulate the front off as the speed drops down to walking pace, and finish with just the rear, stopping left foot down, something an IAM rider commented was the way he used to do it before he joined the IAM!

I have to say the ability to do braking exercises on a track is useful, but I do have slight concerns about the difference in grip between a wet track and a wet road; the only surface on the road that is equivalent to a wet track is the ‘Shellgrip’ anti-skid surfaces. You need to go away and practice on the surfaces you normally ride on, not rely on what you think you have learned on a track!

To my mind possibly the most interesting presentation of the day was by a chap from Avon (tyres, not beauty products!).

He was obviously extremely knowledgable about tyres – I got a chance to chat over tea and he was off to talk to a government committee on bike safety about bike tyres the following day, so clearly knew his rubber.

The most thought provoking observation he made was that in the conditions (13c, and wet) the tyres that would work best on the track would be the high silica sports touring tyres, NOT the supersports tyres.

Yes, I said on the TRACK, not just the road.

He said the sports touring tyres would offer just as much outright grip as the softer tyres under the wet conditions, and furthermore wouldn’t need warming up but would work from cold. The supersports tyres would need to be worked hard to get them up to temperature, and worked hard to keep them there!

The obvious conclusion is that for anything but dry, warm roads on a sunny mid-summer day, you’re better off on a sports touring tyre! Go back to this “Don’t crash on the gas” post just a few days ago and see the relevance of this expert opinion, and the danger of running too sporty tyres in the wrong weather conditions.

There’s another one scheduled for September. Contact:

Jim Newman – Road Safety Coordinator (motorcycles)
Somerset Road Safety Partnership, Somerset County Council, County Hall, The Crescent, Taunton, TA1 4DY
Tel: 0844 980 00 28 Fax: 01823 423439
e-mail roadsafety@somerset.gov.uk

Personally, I’m available for available for talks to clubs and groups throughout the year! Drop me a mail.

How much???

I often feel that the bike industry rips us off for a lot of our riding kit and accessories. For example a fluorescent waistcoat is about £4 plus VAT from a safety equipment supplier. By the time it’s been packaged up for motorcycle use, I’ve seen them for £20 or £25!

But the computer industry is not immune either. My Sharp MM1100 superlight laptop hard disk started making the click of death recently, and some weeks ago failed to reboot, hence my purchase of the Dell Mini 9 I’ve written about a fortnight or so ago.

I managed to find online a disassembly article for the Sharp and having looked at it thought it might be worth trying to get hold of a new hard disk and fit it.

So I did a bit of searching and came up blank – the disk has been out of production for some time, and it used an unusual pin configuration which means that swapping in another current 1.8″ HD isn’t an option.

A bit more digging with the specific part number, and I found two suppliers in the UK. One emailed back and said they hadn’t had time to change their stock lists (!), and the other offered me a refurbished disk, with a link to the quote.

Gordon Bennett! £110 for the disk, £45 for delivery and VAT on top of the lot, making a grand total of £179.40. £110 is daft enough for a refurbished 20Gb, but £45 delivery? What are they sending it in – a diamond encrusted box?

Anyway, loath to throw away an otherwise decent bit of kit, I went back to the laptop, rebooted 15 or 20 times and finally got the recovery menu up. After several false starts, I managed to get XP reinstalled from the recovery partition and running. On the off-chance that’ll it’ll help prevent the disk errors, I have turned off hibernation and the page file, and installed the working files I need on a compact flash card. It’ll do for showing the videos to the trainees.

Just on the off-chance someone has a functional disk surplus to requirements, it’s a Hitachi DK-14FA-20 20.0GB 1.8″ ATA/100!

Slap on the wrist from Amazon

Like many website owners, I use an Amazon.co.uk feed to display adverts for relevent books on the website.

Last week, I got a “slap on the wrist” email pointing out that I was failing to comply with their terms and conditions for displaying such adverts.

They’ve reduced the level of cost for free delivery to £5 from £15.

Unbeknownst to me, the adverts that Amazon are streaming to my site still show the old amount of £15. Hence MY contravention of THEIR terms and conditions.

“We are writing to remind you that we changed our ‘Free Super Saver Delivery’ threshold from £15 to £5 back in October 2008. We have noticed there are still some advertisements displaying the incorrect delivery threshold. Section 2 of the Amazon.co.uk Associates operating agreement stipulates that content (including prices & shipping) no longer displayed on the Amazon.co.uk site should be deleted.

‘Further, you acknowledge and agree that you will: (a) not, in connection with this Agreement, display or reference on your site, any trademark or logo of any third party seller on the Amazon.co.uk Site; (b) use any data, images, text, or other information obtained by you from us or our site in connection with this Agreement (‘Content’) only in a lawful manner and only in accordance with the terms of this Agreement; (c) not modify or alter any Content that consists of a graphic image, other than to resize it; (d) not edit any Content that consists of text, other than to shorten its length; (e) not sell, redistribute, sublicense or transfer any Content; (f) not use any Content in a manner intended to send sales to any site other than the Amazon.co.uk Site; and (g) promptly delete any Content that is no longer displayed on the Amazon.co.uk Site or that we notify you is no longer available for your use. “

Quite why their own input to the streamed advert can’t be updated at their end is beyond me. So it seems I have to waste my time and effort, not to mention my upload bandwidth, correcting a problem of their making.

Hopefully, the way I’ve set up the advertising widget now will preclude this kind of nonsense in the future.

Somerset Bikesafe Sunday 17 May – places available

I’m told by Jim at Somerset Road Safety that there are still some spots available on the Somerset Bikesafe on Sunday 17th.

It’s in Bridgwater, just off the M5, only costs a tenner and runs from 09.30 – 16.00.

roadsafety@somerset.gov.uk should get you in contact.

Don’t crash on the gas!

The ‘Winter Riding Season’ usually kicks off with a series of spills at junctions, where riders usually report that “the back end just came round on me” or something similar.

The accident is particularly likely where riders are turning right out of a side road – the distance you travel encourages trying to power through the turn, plus the fact you’re crossing two lanes of traffic (so generally fewer gaps on a busy roads) leads to riders who are in a hurry.

In this case, it was coming off a roundabout late at night in spring on a wet surface. The back end came round and the rider went down on the low side. It seems it’s a roundabout the rider uses all the time so why did it happen?

First of all, let’s get the usual excuses out the way.

Cold Tyres. Do motorcycle tyres need to be warmed up? There are all sorts of stories going round about how you need to warm up tyres before they’ll offer proper grip, some riders are even resorting to using tyre warmers in the garage before they go out for a ride!

Is this likely? If street tyres needed warming up before use to the point where they offered dangerously low levels of grip when cold, the riders all over the place would be crashing and able to point the finger directly at the tyre. Where would be the first place they would be running to?

It wouldn’t be the tyre warmer shop, it would be the compensation courts, particularly in the USA! Think about it. Even road legal trackday tyres have to produce a reasonable level of grip on the road from cold; it’ll just be a lot less than they would on a sun-warmed race track!

————

[EDIT] 23 May – I’m going to change my opinion on this somewhat.

At the recent Rider Performance day at Castle Combe where I was giving one of the presentations, I got to listen to a tyre expert who’d come along from Avon Tyres. The most thought provoking observation he made was that in the conditions (13c, and wet) the tyres that would work best on the track would be the high silica sports touring tyres, NOT the supersports tyres.

Yes, he said on the TRACK, not just the road.

He said the sports touring tyres would offer just as much outright grip as the softer tyres under the wet conditions, and furthermore wouldn’t need warming up but would work from cold. The supersports tyres would need to be worked hard to get them up to temperature, and worked hard to keep them there!

The obvious conclusion is that for anything but dry, warm roads on a sunny mid-summer day, you’re better off on a sports touring tyre!

I still think a rider with reasonable feel and understanding of how the bike is performing under them could ride round the issue, and tyre warmers are clearly a fantasy, but if you’re a bit ham-fisted it does throw some light on the annual rash of cold-weather crashes! [/EDIT]

————

Diesel. Fuel spills do happen. But generally they’re thin streaks or drips, and you might slide as you hit it, but you’re soon off onto clean tarmac and the tyre grips again, after a twitch and a wobble.

Very occasionally there is a BIG spill you can’t avoid – I have had to negotiate a couple over the years, including one that caused three other riders ahead of me to crash. But a spill that size you can see and even smell. Police accident analyses do not point to diesel and petrol spills as a major cause of crashes in the UK.

So what does cause slides that the bike can’t recover from? Simple; it’s lean angle and throttle! At the same time. To excess.

I have lost count of how many times I’ve explained this on the bike forums I contribute to, yet people still read magazine articles which bang on about feeding the power on as you start to pick the bike up out of the turn. What they discover is that if you feed in TOO much power, you end up picking the bike up out of the ditch instead!

The short answer. Get the bike upright THEN feed the power in. That way if you exceed the available grip, you get upright wheelspin – no big deal.

The long answer. Why is this “feed the power in” technique a poor one? It’s basically down to road surfaces. We’re not on a track. For starters roads don’t grip like a track, but in the wet they get much worse. A GOOD CONDITION wet road (shellgrip excepted) will deliver around 15% less grip than it will in the dry, a worn surface considerably less.

The tyre can deliver a certain amount of grip, depending on
a) how grippy the tyre is
b) how grippy the surface is

Let’s look at the first part – tyre grip. If you’re leaning over, you’re asking the tyre to grip to keep it turning. If you’re adding throttle, you’re asking the rear tyre to deliver grip to drive the bike forward.

Now, let’s factor in what happens as you feed in the throttle and the bike speeds up whilst you’re leant over in the middle of a corner – you need increase your lean to keep the bike on the same line. So you’re now asking the tyre for MORE grip to keep the bike turning at the same time as you’re asking for MORE grip to keep it driving! This split of grip between acceleration and cornering is sometimes known as the “Traction Pie”.

It’s not rocket science to see that by twisting the throttle mid-corner it’s easy to try to carve off a bigger slice of the Traction Pie than is available – the grip the tyre was delivering quite happily a moment earlier suddenly isn’t there any more. In essence, it’s the reverse of the problem of applying brakes mid-turn, and riders are quite aware of the danger of that.

The second issue is road surface – it’s half the deal – if the surface can’t deliver its half of the grip, then the tyre won’t stick to it if you try to bite off a big chunk of the traction pie!

Just like a soft compound tyre will allow more throttle and lean angle than a hard compound tyre, so a high friction road surface like ‘Shellgrip’ will offer more than worn out and slick surface; you can brake and lean almost as hard in the wet as you can in the dry on Shellgrip.

The difference is that surfaces aren’t consistant and constantly change. You don’t change tyres half way through a bend! (Though come to think of it, someone will no doubt mention dual compound tyres, but note these offer more grip at bigger lean angles, not less!)

In particular, high grip surfaces are often laid where cars are turning or braking, but these surfaces are rarely extended far out of the junctions or corners, and motorcycles with their wider lines can run off the Shellgrip onto the ordinary tarmac whilst still leant over. Consider the potential consequences!

OK, having explained at some length why bikes lose traction mid-turn, why do riders continue to do it? Two reasons:

• it’s a track technique – it’ll get you round the lap faster (at the risk of crashing out) so it’s “sexy”.
• it’s in the advanced police riding manual “Motorcycle Roadcraft” – which was written when police were trying to squeeze the highest speeds possible out of 50hp Triumph Saints and BMW R75s.

Neither is a good justification for using the technique when even newly qualified riders are buying 100hp 600s. I’ve wheelspun a CG125 in the wet, so it’s not difficult with a 100hp bike.

So why can’t you shut the throttle and get it back?

You need to understand how tyres deliver traction – unfortunately the sums don’t work the same for losing and regaining traction. It’s just the way tyres work beyond the normal friction rules (which incidentally is why you can lean over more than 45 degrees without falling off) – once you break traction you have to reduce what you’re asking the tyre to do in terms of the traction pie beyond what it was offering when it lost traction.

It’s a bit complicated to explain without resorting to graphs and equations, but trust me that it’s much difficult to regain grip lost during a slide than it was to to lose it in the first place.

If you’re on the throttle, once a tyre has broken traction, you’ll find it difficult to keep it from wheelspinning. And if it’s wheelspinning, it’s delivering next to zero grip. In a straight line, you just shut the throttle and the tyre stops spinning and you regain traction. No big deal

But if it spins up at the same time as you’re leaning, then the tyre slides out sideways at an angle to the front wheel, because of the design of a motorcycle as two wheels with a hinge in the middle.

Now you have a big problem. If you try to reduce the throttle imput to regain grip, the bike is sideways on. When the tyre grips, the next stop is usually an aerial exit from the machine in the form of a highside. If you were watching British Superbikes from Oulton Park on Easter Monday, you’d have seen some excellent examples of bikes losing traction, getting sideways and being unable to regain it, with the riders being thrown off – one of them even crashed behind the pace car!

Alternatively you try to steer the bike upright to take away some of the lean angle. At least, that’s what riding manuals will say; “steer into the slide”. There’s a clear disadvantage there because there’s a reason you’re leaning over – to get round a bend. Steering into the slide takes you off the road or worse into oncoming traffic.

In reality, once the back end has gone mid-turn, it all happens far too fast for the average rider (me included) and if you stay on at this point it’s divine intervention. Those not so blessed will go down lowside if the tyre continues to slide, or highside if the tyre gets broadside enough for the contact patch to “grow” and grip again.

And incidentally, this is why it was very unlikely to be diesel that caused the crash – as soon as he got back on the non-diesel part of the road, the level of grip would have gone right up and the bike would have snapped back into line. As that didn’t happen and the bike continued to slide out and down, it’s far more likely his combination of throttle and lean angle just outrode the wet road surface! Police accident investigations don’t find diesel actually causes many bike crashes – but it’s an easy excuse for the rider!

So, how to avoid?? Two suggestions.

The first one is to use “Point and Squirt” cornering. Rather than try to use big lean angles, sweeping lines and feeding the power on whilst turning, use the Point and Squirt. Slow down upright, get mid-turn speeds down, square turns off by turning tight, get the bike upright again and THEN put the power on.

Second, look at the tyres. Many people fit soft compound tyres that are really designed for trackdays in the belief they’ll give more grip on the road. They do allow bigger lean angles than touring tyres.

Or rather, they do on a CONSISTENT surface.

Just like any tyre, if the surface can’t deliver its half of the grip, then the tyre won’t stick to it – but now because of the confidence offered by the soft compound tyre, the rider is leaning the bike further, feeding the power in harder…

…all the conditions that make recoving a slide more difficult if not downright impossible.

Touring or Sport-touring tyres don’t deliver the outright dry grip (though I’ve got my knee down without too much bother on the old Mk 111 Avon Roadrunners in the past) but they let go more predictably in the wet – you usually get a series of warning “slips” before they slide.

Final point. A slower, squarer turn gets you upright again sooner. And because you’re upright, you can get on the power harder and make a quicker getaway than the rider who’s still leaning getting round the corner!

Sorted!

Yana Da Silva on a Confidence Builder Course

Yana (AKA Quicksilva on Visordown) has done a couple of courses with me over the years. This is her write up of the first course she did with Survival Skills, a Confidence Builder course where we sorted her basic cornering issues out, which had been troubling her for months since passing her test.

“Decided to go and spend the day with Spin before I ended up decorating a lorry!

“First off clearly I knew even less than I thought I knew because the stuff he showed me about hazards and road signs had just never been on my radar before. Road positioning for better visability of the road ahead was also new.

“But here’s where I now have to accept that whilst the good lord blessed me with a face that won’t scare small children or grown men, he clearly forgot to hand out common sense.

“Basically when following a right hand corner and you’re over on the left you gently countersteer right – the KEY BIT is to STOP applying pressure to the countersteer to STOP you CONTINUING to lean further and therefore [crossing] over to the white line.

“If you apply a gentle pressure it will turn the bike enough to do the job – CLEARLY this is common sense to EVERYONE ELSE so WHY OH WHY has it not registered with me in ten months of riding!!!

“You can imagine Kevin’s face when I was describing how in the middle of a right hand bend I was having to countersteer left to keep the bike to the left —- it was at this point that the penny dropped, even if it had taken all day because I couldn’t articulate exactly what I was doing!!

“My only defence is that i have never understood the dynamics of two wheels (pretty poor i know!!)

“Anyways – tried it out again when I got home and am delighted to say I enjoyed a great ride on some twisties that have always scared me due to my poor road positioning – and this time i never once tried to use left countersteering on a right hand bend!

“So many thanks Spin for the advice and training – it was well worth it and I am very glad that I followed the advice of VDErs on Survival Skills about training to get it sorted.”

Yana worked very hard on the day so I was extremely relieved we finally got to the bottom of it!! It was a case of both of us listening to the other – and then asking the right questions!!

After passing her test, Yana had heard all about countersteering from other riders and read up on the technique, and understood the general idea of pushing the bar in the direction you want to turn (push left, go left / push right go right).

Unfortunately because the dynamics are not often fully explained (or recognised by riders for that matter), she hadn’t fully grasped that there are three stages of countersteering:

1. the initial push to generate the lean angle
2. a relaxation of the push but maintaining reduced pressure to hold the line
3. releasing all pressure to let the bike use it’s self-correcting steering to return to the upright

What she was trying to do was to push all the way through the turn – so the bike leaned beyond the angle she wanted and in consequence turned harder than she intended, and part way through the turn, she was countersteering in the opposite direction to correct the oversteer.

The result was a weird zig-zagging line round the bend that was as disconcerting to watch as it must have been to ride!

And the training paid off – towards the end of the session, she was able to take prompt avoiding action by means of countersteering to dodge a cluckwit rider on a red VFR who was on the wrong side of the road mid-turn… excellent reaction!!

In many ways this was one of the tougher courses I’ve had. It’s the weird problems like this that are really difficult to identify. It reminds me of another woman who’d had an accident on the brakes and lost confidence.

I could see something wasn’t right about her braking, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. It took me around 45 minutes of following her and trying to get a view from different positions before I spotted it – she was braking rear first / front second and doing most of the braking on the rear brake. It turned out she’d been braking like that since CBT – she’d clearly mis-heard or mis-understood her CBT instructor and it hadn’t been picked up by either her DAS instructor, or the DSA examiner!

Half an hour’s chat over a cuppa explaining the dynamics of braking half-convinced her she had got the wrong end of the stick, and another 30 minutes spent doing every type of stop from gentle drifts to a halt to full-on emergency stops showed her how to use the brakes effectively in al situations.

It’s incredibly rewarding when a course like those two gives a good result.

Using the Point and Squirt approach to cornering

From “BikerLass”

Bikerlass and her hubby did a Bends course were we looked at positioning and using the positive braking, slow entry, quick steering and positive acceleration approach to cornering I call “Point and Squirt”.

“Me and Mr BL have used this Point and Squirt method as a matter of routine since having the training with Kevin, and it is very confidence inspiring.

“It really works; it may seem alien to push yourself out towards the centre of the road on a left hander, but once you are confident about counter steering quickly and thus being able to quickly move away from any oncoming traffic that may be straying over the centre line, it makes a lot of sense.

“You can see further around the bend, and whats more, can also be seen sooner by oncoming traffic. The same follows for junctions just around bends – any traffic joining your road can see you quicker than if you are hugging the left hand side of the road.”

Mind Riding

One of the areas of study that I’ve been very keen on researching for myself and have worked to incorporate into my training courses is the mental side of learning riding skills.

For some years I’ve been running a Sport Psychology course which goes into considerable detail on the ‘brain training’ stuff, and looks at how to use techniques like ‘focus’ and ‘centering’, approaches to better performance used by sports people for years to get “in the zone”, as well as exploring topics like:

• physiology of the body and muscle memory
• visual perception
• brain/vision interaction and how decision making is handled by the three different parts of the brain:
  • the slow, real-time “look, recognise, consider, decide” decision making neo-cortex
  • the fast, “learned response” trainable mid-brain
  • the blindingly quick “survival reaction” instinctive lizard brain

I’ve also written about many of the topics on Visordown, on my own website or for other publications – you can find the “Spidy Sense” article I wrote about it for “The Road” (the MAG journal) back in Dec 06 here:
http://www.survivalskills.co.uk/riding_skills_76.htm

There’s also another companion piece, “Armchair Riding” that went in the next issue and is also on the website in the ‘Riding Skills’ section.

I’ve also been running online e-courses since 2006. You can find the home page of that site here:
http://survivalskills.backpackit.com/pub/688691

and incidentally I am also an NVQ accredited e-Tutor, assessed in skills required to deliver distance learning.

My e-course parallels the practical training I offer on the Survival Skills practical courses which in essence is a three-cornered pyramid:

1) technical skills (can you handle the bike to put it where you want to be?)
2) attitude (can you control impatience, aggression/victim mentality, and avoid “power struggles”?)
3) knowledge (are your decisions based on a full understanding of the hazard, the various directions in which the situation may develop, and the risk to you, and the harm that may result if you cannot avoid it?)

You then need a fourth prop – the ‘brain training’ techniques that allow the skills you’ve learned to “stick” and to be “fresh” so that they can be applied as and when needed.

The e-course covers all these four areas of learning. Obviously on the e-course I can’t see students ride real-time (unless they visit me for an assessment ride), so they get a series of carefully constructed exercises to follow and report back on. I’ve also got plans to use on-bike video footage provided by the trainee and analyse that.

So it was with some interest I read a forum post about a new website, www.mindriding.com which appeared around the end of last year, run by Alec Gore. The name seemed familiar and I quickly recalled that Alec and I did correspond briefly when he was looking for work as an instructor, when he was coming to the end of his time policing in Hong Kong.

It looks nicely presented on the website but details are a bit sketchy – there are a lot of buzz words (“paradigm?”) but not much obvious content. There’s very little on the syllabus on the website, but assuming it’s a repacked version of the Mind Driving book, you can find the contents of that here:

http://www.skilldriver.org/sampleContents.pdf

Whilst it’s a good book, the ideas therein aren’t 100% original either. Malcolm Palmer of Cooper Bike Training and Steve Dixey of Rider Ideas have been considering the mental side of riding for years.

I don’t want to take anything away from the job that Stephen Haley and Alec Gore have done in putting it all together, but Malcolm, Steve and myself have swapped many of the same ideas in a public forum (Visordown.com) in the years since the board launched back in 2000, so our discussions predate by some years the appearance of the Mind Driving website!

As my own courses show, the distance learning idea isn’t new – in fact, “Mind Riding” is only paper-based with email support as far as I can see, rather than using a full online learning environment such as I take advantage of, where the learning exploits techniques like embedded video, interactive FLASH presentations and real time chat.

Interestingly at £495 the Mind Riding course works out at just £15 more than the combined cost of my e-course and a 2 day Survival Skills course, but it’s nearly £300 more expensive than the cost of my e-course and a 3 hour assessment ride!! Perhaps I need to put my prices up!

Staying connected on the move – Dell Mini 9

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned my trials with the Acer Aspire One – a nice netbook but crippled by the poor choice of dumbed-down operating system, and a machine which unfortunately broke down after a couple of days use before I had chance to put Windows XP on it.

As soon as it was returned to the shop for a refund, I went online to Tesco Direct and ordered my second choice, the Dell Mini 9, which turned up for in-store collection next day.

Unwrapping the packaging, the first impressions are how shiny the black case is. It’s actually rather nice-looking, though I did like the blue colour I picked for the Acer. It’s still a fingerprint magnet though.

Anyway, opening the clamshell up and booting, there’s a fairly long winded procedure to click through as you go through the Dell EULA and agree to sign your life away. When that’s done, rebooting and you’re into Windows XP.

The first thing you notice is that the screen is very bright – for normal use indoors you can turn it right down – but highly reflective. It probably explains partly at least the crisp clarity of the display but doesn’t help viewing when there’s brighter light behind. Viewing angles are pretty good though, with it viewable through 90 degrees or more.

Setting up the wireless network was painless – once I’d configured my router correctly, that is – but did reveal one issue with the 600 pixel deep display; some of the configuration dialogue boxes drop off the bottom of the screen, so you can’t actually see the OK or Cancel buttons! The resolution is fixed at 1024 x 600, so there’s no easy way round this that I can see. One workaround is to plug in an external monitor, and after some research online I did find a reference to a bit of freeware that will force a resolution change on the graphics but I haven’t tried that.

[EDIT - there's a much easier workaround. You need to use the display settings to change the screen resolution to 1280x768. This will have the effect of making the desktop disappear below the bottom of the screen but moving the mouse to the bottom edge of the screen will scroll the desktop up - and voila! Your missing dialogue box buttons are revealed! Change back when you're finished installing!]

Getting online revealed the next issue; I discovered that some of my regular websites didn’t display right – some parts of the text on the pages were displaying at the wrong font size which made a mess of the layout.

I fiddled around with various font settings on several different browsers without success, and it wasn’t till I investigated the display settings under the “Settings” tab (advanced button), I found that the display DPI had been set to 120dpi, when the normal setting is 96dpi. Putting this back to the standard setting returned all font sizes to normal and restored the websites. If you have weird display issues with web pages, try this!

My next plan was to download some of the programs I like to have running, such as firewall and anti-virus. First thing installed was a file manager to deal with install programs and to see how much space was available. Ah… with an 8Gb solid state drive fitted, only 1Gb was free.

Now, I knew it was a small drive when I ordered the Dell (the 16Gb SSD was one of the reasons for going for the Acer in the first place) but 7Gb seemed a lot for a clean XP installation, so I looked to free up some space.

The first thing to go was Dell “bloatware”. There’s some kind of avatar creation software associated with the webcam which is completely unnecessary and was chucked in the recycle bin straight away, freeing up hundreds of Mbs. Also removed were the Norton trial and Adobe Reader (replaced with AVG and Foxit PDF reader). That freed up around another Gb, but more had to go. There’s an install of MS Works on it which I’ll never use, so that went too.

But there was still something taking up a lot of space, so I had a look at the system files! Aha… a huge page file and an hibernation file.

Turning off hibernation saved a further gigabyte (the size of the hibernation file is equal the the amount of RAM), and reducing the pagefile to 200Mb saved another 800Mb, without impacting the performance noticeably. Some users are turning the page file off altogether, but leaving 200Mb doesn’t seem too dramatic a space hit.

I could have gone further, and re-installed a stripped-down version of XP, which apparently only needs around 1Gb, but with everything working I’d got the installed files down to around 3Gb, so I decided to leave it at that as I now had around 3.5Gb of free space on the SSD. That still left some missing capacity, which I believe is taken up by a Dell tools hidden partition. Some people have deleted that but I gather it makes diagnostics difficult if you have a problem, so I left it.

As I’ve mentioned before, most of my “office” is based on Portable Apps that run off a USB stick, so I don’t need to install much in the way of software, but there’s a few things I like that won’t run in a portable mode, for example this blogging software I’m using right now is one, K-Meleon web browser seems happier installed, and a codec pack is needed to play my various training videos.

Where possible these “installed” programs have gone onto a 1Gb SD card, though I’ve made sure the file manager and graphics software are on the internal SSD so I can use the card slot for the camera SD card where necessary. I could go up to an 8Gb card for under a tenner, and that would give me enough install space to for just about anything I’m likely to need, but for the moment I’ll live with the smaller card. Even so, I still have 3Gb of free space on the SSD now. [Edit - I got a 4Gb card for £7 and that's more than enough for my mobile office software and working files - together they normally live on a 256Mb USB stick .]

OK, so with the software installed, how usable is such a small machine in the real world?

Well I’ve already mentioned the small screen depth. This means a few compromises in use. One of the first things I’ve done is to shrink desktop icons and display text to the minimum, and to shuffle them up closer together. I’ve also set the task bar to auto hide, which gives a little more screen real estate.

With programs, it makes sense to turn off unnecessary toolbars, use small icons and disable text on the icon bars, and to rearrange the ones left to maximise usable space. Some programs allow the status bar to be turned off too, which might be useful for some.

With the web browser, installing a compact skin also helps, as would using the F11 “full screen” display…

…which presented a keyboard problem! There is no F11 key!

To keep the keyboard compact (and allow the battery to be a full height, chunky thing), Dell have removed the row of function keys that normally sits above the number keys and instead have given you F1-F10 on the ASDF row, activated by the function key on the bottom row that also gives access to volume, screen brightness and so on.

Some reviewers seem to loath that decision, in practice I didn’t find it an issue as there are only a few programs within which I use function keys.

But the missing F11 key was a bit of a frustration, until I discovered on a useful internet forum that it’s actually the function key + Z combo and that F12 is the X! For some reason it’s not marked on the keyboard. So welcome back full screen browsing!

The keyboard itself isn’t too bad with a reasonably crisp action. It’s not perfect, definitely not as easy to type on as my old Sharp subnote, mostly because some of the non-QWERTY keys are half-width, which leads to the odd mishit key. The offset on the top row of keys isn’t quite the same as the bottom row either which is a little odd-feeling, although it’s a distinct improvement on the first iteration of the Mini 9 which had the top row directly above the middle row keys – apparently that was very difficult to touch type on.

The track pad is nice and responsive but rather let down by two spongy buttons below it. They work but are soggy – they feel like the spring has partly broken. Still, it’s perfectly workable, they just feel very different from the keys.

All the usual connectors are in place, with three USB sockets, ethernet, external monitor, and external speakers and microphone to go with the webcam and mic in the lid. Other options not fitted on my Tesco Direct sourced netbook include bluetooth and 3G connectivity. For enquiring minds, the SIM slot for the latter is behind the battery but don’t try sticking a SIM in just to see if it works – there’s no socket in the slot!

Upgrading the RAM and the SSD is relatively easy, with a large, two screw hatch covering much of the base of the machine and removing it doesn’t invalidate the warranty.

I’ve not fully tested out battery life but it’s quoted as over three hours and certainly it’s capable of running a couple of hours without problems.

Issues?

Certainly, the pretty standard processor / graphics / RAM netbook package is never going to match an up-to-the-minute desktop or full on laptop for processing power, but that’s not the point. The Dell Mini 9 is quite capable of running most day-to-day software – web browsing, word processing and web editing, basic photo editing and playing music and video clips.

There’s no fan and it does get hot – with the processor doing a bit of work playing video or similar, the base of the machine does get distinctly warm. For some reason, there’s no charging light, just a low battery warning LED on the edge of the case. Slightly worrying are numerous reports of the SSD failing and being replaced under warranty, something to keep an eye on.

If you just want a web browser / email solution and aren’t interested in installing your own software, it’s a job that the Acer Aspire One will do, but love it or hate it, for the average user WinXP on a netbook offers a portable, flexible and very useable working environment that the stripped down Linux machines simply can’t match out of the box.

The painless install procedure of the vast majority of Windows programs knocks the stuffing out of the Linux command line for the average user too. Certainly I could learn more Linux, but do I want to when I have work to do?

As is the way of these things, the Dell Mini 9 has already been superceded by the Vostro A90, though it appears it’s a simply rebadged Mini 9 with a price hike. [Edit - Blimey! The Vostro A90 must be a candidate for the shortest model run ever; both the Mini 9 and the Vostro were discontinued at the beginning of June! ]

At the date of writing, the Mini 9 (minus Bluetooth and 3G) is still available at Tesco Direct for £229.00 at the moment, which is a big saving on the PC World price for the Vodaphone-connected version.

Quicktip! – Adjusting the brake and clutch lever angle and reach

When you’re sat on the bike you should, ideally, have your arms relaxed with your elbows bent. If you don’t and your elbows are locked, your arms are rigid and you won’t find it easy to steer the bike!

Rest your hands on the bars and straighten your fingers onto the levers. The back of your hand should be in line with your forearms with the fingertips gently resting on levers. If there’s a distinct “angle” between your forearm and the back of the hand, then the levers are angled incorrectly.

Usually, they’ll be too high – because sports bikes are designed for riding in a crouch, not sat up behind the fairing.

It’s all down to ergonomics and how the muscles work. Your fingers operate much better if the fingers are in line with your forearm – the tendons in the wrist then have a straight pull – much more comfortable! And ultimately, I’m told it could just help prevent tendonitis and carpal tunnel syndrome.

It’s also worth adjusting the reach to the clutch if possible, either by setting the span adjuster or with the cable so the lever is at a sensible reach. It’s awkward and uncomfortable if you have small hands if you are operating the lever at the very furtherst reach of your fingers.

Particularly if you ride in town, the clutch hand gets a serious workout and as you have more strength in your grip when your fist is clenched, it makes sense to set the clutch lever to bite closer to the bar than at the end of its travel.